Calvino on writing impossible books…

From The Guardian (read the whole thing here, and about the October 27 “Another Look” event on Calvino here):

“In a lecture delivered in New York in the spring of 1983, Italo Calvino remarked that ‘most of the books I have written and those I intend to write originate from the thought that it will be impossible for me to write a book of that kind: when I have convinced myself that such a book is completely beyond my capacities of temperament or skill, I sit down and start writing it.'”